Honda's new hybrid campaign: Had to laugh
A Prius or Honda's new hybridOf course this is a Toyota Prius, but after having had a look at the spyshots of what many are calling Honda's new hybrid, it might soon be hard to tell the difference between the Prius and Honda's upcoming new hybrid vehicle.
While it seems quite plausible that size and aerodynamics forced Honda's design hand, I couldn't help but laugh when I read some copy Honda has out on its latest hybrid. "Our newest hybrid is a futuristic five-door hatchback that sports a unique style and sleek design."
Perhaps Honda has a design trick up its sleeve, but if the new pictures floating around the Internet are accurate, I'm not sure "unique" is very accurate. Anyway, we will soon find out the truth about Honda's new hybrid design as the vehicle should join Honda's current fleet of hybrid cars in "early 2009."
Labels: Hybrid Vehicles, toyota prius
posted by Dahcredyns at
8:51 AM
9 Comments:
I think we should be reasonably used to such "unique" things in life by now...nothing being made anymore is unique...movies, food, products, clothes, nothing.
Everything is a copy of something else but seems unique sometimes because A) most people have never seen the original product the new product is based on OR B) people have such short memories that something old is now something new.
Yeah, I don't really care what the Honda hybrid looks like.
This is Gen 1 of a Honda Hybrid designed from scratch for environmental friendliness. And if in order to design the best, most environmentally efficient, and aerodynamic vehicle it ends up copying a lot of the Prius, I say more power to them.
Once the batteries and other technologies mature, and give car designers more of a power budget to go with less aerodynamic designs, so be it. But for now, I don't care if the most efficient designs all look like the Prius.
Can't argue against that, I tell my kids that all the time with music.
While your point is very true, we can build off the knowledge gained before us.
Anyway, if Honda is serious about providing a cheaper but equally as efficient-as-prius hybrid, I think that would be a better focus, rather than their Prius-like 'unique' design. Of course, maybe the design hasn't been fully hammered out yet and these spyshots are a little presumptuous. What a marketing coupe that would be.
alcatholic-
my first comment was to noz, but i completely second your comment.
The next big thing will be a plug-in hybrid, what with Toyota and GM both annoucing 2010 launches for them-- Toyota with the 3rd-gen Prius and GM with the Volt.
Honda's Ersatz-Prius IMHO is not even close. It will be using the Honda IMA drive which cannot be adapted to work as a plug-in hybrid at all.
I predict a couple years from now Honda's management will still be scratching their heads wondering why they still couldn't beat Toyota in hybrid sales, despite copying the Prius shape. :-P
...and instead of creating a Better Accord Hybrid when the need is there (Camry Killer?) they just S-Can the whole thing. At this point they should have a better Accord, and even a Pilot Hybrid or something by now. We need these small companies (Pheonix, Zenn, Tesla, etc) to get some good financing (Gates/Buffet?) and ram their "modern" products downt the throats of these big companies that despite cornering the market and massive market caps, can't seem to change direction in less than a decade. Sooo disappointed in all these guys really.
armchair-
since the first iteration of the third gen prius will still use nihm, i think there is still time for honda. plus, toyota's plug-in prius is probably only going to be available for fleet sales at first and gm isn't going to sell 100,000 volts per year until after at least 2014 or so.
thus not only does honda have time, especially with its focus on cheap hybrids, but even before phevs, lithium-powered conventional hybrids might be a big half step.
sadly, however, while honda is behind toyota, most other automakers are even further behind.
anon-
i share your disappointment with automakers as well. in fact, i think that disappointment can largely be extended to all big corporations in general.
Is Honda planning to resurrect the Insight or will there be a new hybrid with the same name?
Some of the cues that look especially Prius-like (such as the area around the back of the rear window) don't look like permanent styling features to me. It would not surprise me if the test vehicle was camouflaged to look like a Prius intentionally, so as to get people talking (like we are doing) and then have those same people react with approving surprise when the actual styling is unveiled. They can't have disguised the general shape much, but my impression is that this car is wearing a fake Prius beard.
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